Greetings. Amidst the continuing discussions and arguments regarding the
selection and allocation of Internet Global Top-Level Domains (known as
"gTLDs" -- such as ".com"), the politically popular concept of what might be
termed "ghettoized" domains has been been frequently cited. The term
"ghetto" is emotionally loaded, but seems particularly apt nonetheless for
the situations at hand.

In the case of the Internet, a domain ghetto is a gTLD allocated for the
specific purpose of attempting to keep particular users "in" or "out" of the
sites contained therein. The two most frequently suggested domain ghettos
at present are "dot-ex-ex-ex" and ".kids" (the phonetic version of the
former is being used to try avoid triggering typically overzealous and
inaccurate filtering programs -- please see the
"PFIR Statement on Content
Control and Ratings").

The implementation of these sorts of ghettoized gTLDs (the term
"ghetto-domains" will be used henceforth) would be unwise, unworkable,
unsuccessful at achieving the stated purposes, and potentially dangerous
to speech-related freedoms. Overall, not a good idea!

The following discussion is directed specifically to the issues surrounding
official gTLDs as sanctioned by ICANN and appropriate governmental
authorities. It does not address various attempts by some entities to
establish their own top-level domains outside of the generally accepted
domain structure, since such unsanctioned domains are not (and are unlikely
in the near future to become) accessible by the majority of Internet users,
and appear to mainly add confusion to an already complex environment.

What would be involved in establishing ghetto domains? In order to
implement a ghettoized-domain system, you would of course need to determine
what sorts of sites would be required, permitted, encouraged, or pressured
to be in each such restricted domain.

Next, you need to establish dispute resolution, policing, and enforcement
mechanisms to implement those decisions. Since the Internet is a worldwide
medium, most of these decisions and dispute enforcement mechanisms would
seemingly need to be determined on a global basis, since the vast majority
of sites are free to move their Web operations to other jurisdictions or
countries as they wish, and can usually be easily accessed from most other
locations around the world.

Finally, if there's to be any intellectual honesty in the equation, there
would also be a need to establish that the ghetto-domains can technically
achieve their goals and that they are not simply encouraging a false sense of
security in the name of political expediency.

Unless we wish to fundamentally change the nature of many of our societies,
the above steps would presumably need to be accomplished without the
creation of an oppressive "information control" regime that could alter the
basic nature of communications and could conflict with existing laws and
rights of citizens in many countries.

The bottom line: forget it! Ghetto-domains as a method to try control
undesired access to Internet materials appear impossible to implement
without extremely serious side-effects. Nor would the end result, after so
much effort and disruption, be effective at achieving the stated goals of
most ghetto-domain proponents (e.g. to protect children from "inappropriate"
materials).

Technical limitations and fundamental design constraints of the Internet
Domain Name System (DNS) and Web addressing make absolute control over how
sites are named and referred to by other sites impossible to assure, even
with the best intentions of the target sites themselves. This could lead to
such "leakiness" of the categorization system as to render it practically
meaningless as a control mechanism -- it could be easily subverted,
contaminated, and circumvented.

Achieving even basic consensus on what material had earned the "right" to be
in a ".kids" ghetto-domain -- or would be somehow required to be in a
"dot-ex-ex-ex" ghetto-domain, would prove impossible in many countries even
on a domestic basis, much less internationally. The likely outcome of
attempts in this direction would be the reduction of Internet content to a
"lowest common denominator" approach where the dictates of the most
conservative and possibly repressive viewpoints could potentially hold sway
over the entire planet.

Enforcing such decisions would appear to require vast new surveillance,
policing, and judicial (litigation) resources. While it can be assumed that
there would some commercial firms and non-commercial organizations which
would willingly locate within ghetto-domains, there would undoubtedly be vast
numbers of sites, many operated by individuals without charge or profit,
that would be unwilling to voluntarily have their content categorized by
outside entities. For example, can all such persons be forced to move their
Web materials from a personal Web page based on an ISP's ".net" domain over
to a ghetto domain, to maintain access to their viewers or to avoid being
cited for posting "inappropriate" content in the wrong "ordinary" domain?
Such demands would likely result in a parade of litigants for our already
overburdened court systems.

There are many specific examples of these issues that are easy to imagine.
A page of children's "knock-knock" jokes is on someone's conventional home
page. Would this site be ostensibly restricted from access by children
because the author hasn't placed that single page within a ".kids" domain?
Would every site and every page that might be appropriate for a child --
from museums to encyclopedias to search engines, be required to exist in
".kids" or be (supposedly) unreachable by children? And what would be the
penalties if it were determined that some of their material did not meet the
".kids test" promulgated by the powers-that-be? Will general-interest sites
be forced to go through every page of their materials, every entry in
their databases, to somehow segregate the content via arbitrary external
standards?

Similarly, assume that a completely legal nudist camp posts a picture of
their members playing volleyball as part of their site information.
Regardless of individuals' personal feelings about this sort of recreation,
can the site be forced to move to a "dot-ex-ex-ex" domain, since some
persons or localities might feel that such activities were deserving of
condemnation and isolation in that manner? Would the camp operators be
willing to quietly acquiesce to having their sun-drenched volleyball game
equated with hard-core, explicit pornography? And what of art, medical
information relating to sexually-transmitted diseases, and other categories
of content where controversy has always reigned?

Any attempts to impose mandated ghetto-domain requirements either
domestically in the United States (or in many other countries), or on some
sort of standardized global basis, will entail vast amounts of time, money,
effort, and litigation, most of which will be wasted in terms of achieving
their stated technical goals.

As was mentioned above, the technical infrastructure of the Internet and DNS
system simply will not allow for the level of control that ghetto-domain
supporters would require. Internet users (including children), who want to
find their way to particular sites, however those sites are categorized,
will find a way to do so. The task of "merely" categorizing the vast array
of commercial and non-commercial sites would be literally endless and
largely fruitless.

However, this is not to say that such efforts won't have oppressive effects.
Calls for other avenues of Web site ghettoization can be expected in any
case. As more ghetto-domains are defined, the situation only gets more
complicated. What would be targeted next for ghettoization? Political
speech? Consumer complaints? Non-profit fundraising sites? There will
always be vested interests with a desire to compartment public speech in an
attempt to limit its reach. Even though such attempts will be largely
unsuccessful from a technical standpoint in the Internet environment, the
fears of prosecution, litigation, or harassment would still be likely to have
chilling effects on many forms of speech that were mandated to exist within
ghettoized-domain cubbyholes.

We all have concerns about helping our children learn the appropriate ways
to use the Internet responsibly. We certainly need to control genuinely
criminal behavior involving the Net. But we must come to grips with the fact
that the kinds of "censorship" and "categorization" models which have been
applied to other forms of relatively centralized mass media simply will not
function appropriately even in a limited sense for the Internet. They
cannot be applied without draconian changes in the fundamental nature of
speech and other freedoms that are celebrated in many countries throughout
the world.

Ghettoized Global Top-Level Domains are not a solution to Internet content
concerns, but rather are a route to whole new classes of social, legal, and
political problems.